The Whole Enchilada

Over twelve days of riding from August 18, 2025 to August 29, 2025 we covered 460 miles with 32,500 ft of elevation gain. During that time, we celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary and my 49th birthday! 🎂

What a privilege it was to be able to have this adventure with my best friend! I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t proud of us both, but moreso I’m so very proud of Liz, who found herself far outside of her comfort zone so many times on this trip. I’d also be lying if said I never found myself in moments of despair (#peanutbuttermud2025), but she was there to pull me out and keep us moving forward.

We took home no souvenirs except for the memories and my trusty mud-scraping stick.

You might be interested to know that all in, including transportation, food (both groceries and many restaurant meals), camping and several hotels, we spent around $3000 for the trip. This does NOT include the cost of the bikes, of course. Overall, it was a pretty low carbon footprint, since we didn’t fly!

The Journey Home

Because of a confluence of events and conditions (Abiquiu’s distance from Santa Fe, the holiday weekend and expected General 🫡 Fatigue), we had arranged for a car and driver to transport us directly to Albuquerque. In another world we could have taken public transit consisting of a series of free regional buses and the Rail Runner train between Santa Fe and Albuquerque, but it wasn’t an option with our schedule. Our driver arrived right on schedule and we loaded the bikes and gear into a minivan. Then we enjoyed a relaxing two-hour drive and chat with our driver, Karma from Nepal. It would have been a miserable bike ride to Santa Fe, with few route options that weren’t along the very busy US highway. No regrets there!

We booked a hotel in downtown ABQ about three blocks from the Amtrak station. When we arrived, we were pleased that we were able to check in early and decompress, preparing for the long trip home. It was a kitchenette so we walked to a small grocery store on the other side of the tracks and picked up food to cook for dinner along with snacks for the remainder of the trip home.

We cocooned in our hotel room for the rest of the day and vegged out, watching Netflix and starting a rewatch of Breaking Bad.

For the rest of the trip, everything was smooth like silk. The train was on time, we were able to hand our bikes off easily and by the time we reached Galesburg (GBB on the tag) we had finished the rest of season one of Breaking Bad. Also, the cafe car had vegan burgers on sale for $1, so that was cool! The 4hr drive home was uneventful. The last remaining item to tick off was to retrieve the dogs from George’s, which I would handle tomorrow.

What went right?

Thinking about all of the things that could have gone wrong, that could have disrupted these best-laid plans, it sort of boggles my mind. What a trip!

Amtrak with bikes was great. The stressful moments were largely of our own making because we weren’t 100% sure what to expect. The Amtrak employees were all great and traveling by train with bikes is something we want to do again!

The bikes performed great. Aside from the terrible peanut butter mud on that one day, we had no mechanical issues. The bikes are both Chumba Terlingua’s from Black Saddle Bike Shop in Madison, WI.

No crashies, no whammies, no flatties!

I’m very happy with our tire selection! When we got home, I pulled Liz’s off to check the sealant and swap in some less knobby semi-slicks. I was mildly surprised to find that the sealant had nearly dried up. A bit of luck there, but we did have two tubes in case of flat the sealant couldn’t fix.

Our camping gear selection and clothing turned out to be pretty effective and focused. On occasion, Liz found herself a bit chilly at night, so perhaps her new sleeping bag could have been a bit warmer, but sometimes you just have to layer up even in the bag. It was a bit odd, because usually I’m the cold one.

Our health was mostly good for the duration of the trip! We used Diamox (acetazolamide) to help us prepare for the high elevations, and it worked out great. Liz was worried about her knee and one of her feet, but neither ended up causing issues. I was able to stay on my meds and my always-borderline hematocrit levels didn’t give me any trouble. If anything, I felt better on the road than at home. There’s nothing like fresh air and exercise to keep yourself running tip-top! See down below for the flipside of the health discussion…

The Garmin inReach Messenger’s utility was a nice surprise. We were able to communicate even in the most remote places and also could order updated weather forecasts without cell coverage. It also provided the tracker that allowed people to dotwatch our trip. Not to mention the ability to call for SOS in case of emergency. We could have done the entire trip without charging it once (but I did charge it once). All for $60 to activate for the month.

Despite always having to be mindful of water, I think our plan for water consumption and transport was solid. If there was a problem, it was in the execution and not always choosing to max out our water supply. We each had:

• 1.5L backpack for water
• 1L Nalgene bottles
• 1L bag for unfiltered water, which we could fill in a stream and then take with us for later filtering
• 750ml “overflow” water bag, which we ended up using only once

So our total water capacity at any given time was over 4L of water per person, and if the weather had been warmer, we might have actually used it all!

The food situation turned out well, although we did cut it a bit close on our last day (which was day three without resupply). At one moment, we only had a few hundred calories of food remaining in the form of some instant mashed potatoes. If we had been forced to camp another night we would have gone hungry.

The dynamo hubs turned out to be very useful and a great choice for this route. Because of the long descents, we were able to charge our phones and bike computers easily without any active watt penalty. We had two 10400mAh power banks but could have easily gotten by with just one. Having lights that we could turn on without worrying about charging batteries was also very convenient for the few road sections. We also had some extra battery-powered, high-intensity flashers for even more visibility.

What could have gone better?

Our health also suffered a bit! Liz lost feeling (and partial functionality) in her outer-most two fingers (ring and pinky) on her right hand, probably from gripping the handlebars with the power of a thousand suns. My big toes are still numb right at the tips. On some days, my neck would ache quite a bit while riding, particularly in stressful moments or terrain. Time off the bike (i.e. pushing them) would always alleviate that.

We just never slept well in either tents or hotels. But worse in the tents. ☺️ This wasn’t because of bad equipment, but I think mostly because of brains that wouldn’t shut down. Stress about the day to come would keep me spinning late into the night; most of the time I fell asleep around 2-3AM despite being physically tired much earlier. Related: we had dramatically cut back on caffeine before the trip and, for a bit of a boost, we took just a 100mg tablet (or about a cup of coffee) when we woke up in the morning. No actual coffee or other caffeinated drinks until we got to Abiquiu! Perhaps we should have tried completely cutting the caffeine for the best sleep.

We got lucky with the rain (not that we expected a lot of it) because we found that the raincoats we had chosen weren’t the most appropriate for the colder temperatures of the higher elevations. They were too tight to layer effectively with our puffy coats, which was a mistake in planning on our part. To mitigate this we chose to set up the tent instead of riding wet. We didn’t bring any rain pants but we did have rain gloves and socks (which we didn’t use). If there had been long days of rain (like we encountered in the Netherlands) or surprise storms when we couldn’t set up the tent, we would have been pretty miserable and much slower. This was effectively a lot of arid/desert riding, so it was a calculated risk that paid off despite a few bad assumptions.

We definitely underestimated how rugged the route would be! Our bikes, while mechanically perfect, were barely sufficient for the terrain (which is called underbiking in the bikepacking community). Some sections would have been more comfortable with wider tires and a bit of front suspension. But those are bikes we don’t have, so I think we made the right choice! Even so, I don’t think we would have been that much faster, just more comfortable.

I regret hauling the Kindle E-readers along on the trip, simply because of their weight. We rarely had time or energy to read, except at the start and finish of the trip. Liz and I disagree on this and the truth is, they were in her frame bag, so who am I to argue? I was able to finish a book (American War by Omar El Akkad) on the train home, so in that respect I’m grateful Liz hauled my Kindle 450 miles!

On just our second day out, I managed to lose our GoPro when setting the bike down. It was sort of a blessing in disguise as I was already regretting that decision to bring it, so perhaps it was a subconscious move. If anyone found a GoPro around Como, CO, please enjoy it!

Thanks!

Thanks for reading (all ya’ll!), thanks for watching our house (neighbors), thanks for watching our dogs (George and Dave), thanks for riding with us (Allison and Alan), thanks for the timely shuttle (Karen), thanks for the $1 burgers on the train (Elizabeth), thanks for watching our dot, and thanks for the messages of encouragement both on the blog (too many to count) and with the satellite messenger (Harald and Dave)!